Curriculum Metaphors

CURRICULUM METAPHORS

INSTRUCTIONS

Listed below are five metaphors describing approaches to curriculum. Please read them carefully and then select one that best reflects your personal views.

A. THE METAPHOR OF MEDICINE

The curriculum is a dispensary from which students receive medical treatments under the ever present direction of a competent and proficient general diagnostician. Each patient has unique and varying ills, but the diagnostician, using precise and scientific diagnostic techniques, prescribes the proper medicine. Many of the remedies developed by the specialist are self-administered. The diagnostician intervenes only when some problem arises with the treatment which has been prescribed, or when therapy is needed. The science of medicine rather than guesswork will be used to help each patient to mature to his fullest potential.

B. THE METAPHOR OF GROWTH

The curriculum is the greenhouse where students will grow and develop to their fullest potential under the care of a wise and patient gardener. The plants that grow in the greenhouse are of every variety, but the gardener treats each according to its needs, so that each plant comes to flower. This universal blooming cannot be accomplished by leaving some plants unattended. All plants are nurtured with great solicitude, but no attempt is made to divert the inherent potential of the individual plant from its own metamorphosis or development to the whims and desires of the gardener.

C. THE METAPHOR OF TRAVEL

The curriculum is a route over which students will travel under the leadership of an experienced guide and companion. Each traveller will be affected differently by the journey since its effect is at least as much a function of the intelligence, interests, and intent of the traveller as it is of the contours of the route. This variability is not only inevitable, but wondrous and desirable. Therefore, no effort is made to anticipate the exact nature of the effect on the traveller; but a great effort is made to plot the route so that the journey will be as rich, as fascinating, and as memorable as possible.

D. THE METAPHOR OF PRODUCTION

The curriculum is the means of production, and the student is the raw material which will be transformed into a finished and useful product under the control of a highly skilled technician. The outcome of the production process is carefully plotted in advance according to rigorous design specifications, and when certain means of production prove to be wasteful, they are discarded in favour of more efficient ones. Great care is taken so that raw materials of a particular quality of composition are channelled into the proper production systems and that no potentially useful characteristic of the raw material is wasted.

1 E. THE METAPHOR OF NATURAL RESOURCES

The curriculum is the plan for developing and effectively utilizing the natural resources of human ability present in the student. The development of any one natural resource must be seen in terms of its effects upon the larger system. All resources that exist are by definition beneficial to humankind and should be carefully and respectfully developed. Some, however, are related to survival while others meet the non-material needs of humankind. Both of these should be developed with special care.

Miller J P (1996) The Holistic Curriculum. Toronto: OISE Press